The dark corner of Room 404 was no longer a safe place for shadows. Silas Kapito held the lead assassin by the throat. The man in the black stealth suit kicked his legs, trying to breathe. His three partners raised their poisoned blades. They moved fast, but they were only human. Silas was a "Refined Human" with a mind that ran at 0.08 seconds. Silas did not drop the first assassin. He used him as a shield. He swung the man’s body into the other three. CRASH. The assassins fell into a tangled pile of black suits and sharp knives. Before they could stand up, Silas stepped forward. He did not use a weapon. He used his heavy, tungsten-dense boots. He kicked the weapons out of their hands. Clang. Clang. He hit them in the chest, just hard enough to knock the air out of their lungs and put them to sleep. In five seconds, the fight was over. Silas dropped the lead assassin on the floor. He stepped over the sleeping bodies. The "Deep Recovery" had worked. His chest was closed. The bro

The heavy metal elevator dropped like a stone in water. Silas Kapito stood inside the dark box. The red emergency lights flashed over his face. He looked at his own reflection in the metal doors. He looked like a dead boy. His left arm was a ruined mess of torn white skin and dark tungsten bones. His chest was covered in dry silver blood. He was falling toward the darkest basement of the Citadel. He was falling toward the hardest choice of his entire life. “If I pull the cables, my sister dies,” Silas thought. “If I don't pull the cables, the reactor explodes, and my friends in the Ash-Lands die.” This was the core struggle of his human heart. The machine part of his brain told him the math was simple. One life against thousands of lives. The logical choice was to sacrifice Elara. But Silas did not want to be a machine. He squeezed his good right hand into a fist. He promised himself he would find a third way. He would fight the math. He would break the reactor with his bare hand

Deep below the ruined Ash-Lands, there was a place even the sun forgot. It was the sub-basement of the Purge Sector. Hundreds of years ago, this was a massive parking garage for heavy tanks. Now, it was just a giant, dark, empty cave made of cracked concrete. Water dripped from the ceiling. Plop. Plop. Plop. The air smelled like wet stone and old rust. In the center of the dark room, five young people sat in a circle. There was Ren, the brave boy who had stood by Silas from the beginning. There was Kael, the big, strong Hauler. There were Jax and Leo, the twin brothers who moved like shadows. And there was Mara, a fast, quiet girl with fierce eyes. They were Dregs. They had survived the terrible Drop Zone. They had survived the Chimera. They were covered in dirt, and they wore old, torn clothes. But they did not look scared anymore. They were waiting for their King. From the dark tunnel, a heavy sound echoed. CLACK. CLACK. CLACK. The five Dregs stood up. They stood completely

The deep sub-basement was cold, but the air felt heavy with the secret Ren had just heard. A woman was crying deep beneath the mud. The Mother Battery was real. But Silas knew they could not just start digging. "If we dig for the Mother now, we will be blind," Silas told the five Awakened. "General Krov will see us. The Citadel’s sensors will catch us. We need to turn off the eyes of the city before we go down into the dark."Silas pulled a small, stolen data-pad from his pocket. The blue light glowed on his marble-white face. He tapped the screen with his iron-grey finger. A map of the Citadel appeared. "We are going to Sector 9," Silas said. Kael’s eyes went wide. "Sector 9? General, that is the Bunker-District. The richest people in the Syndicate live there. The guards there do not use normal guns. They use heavy laser-cannons.""That is exactly why we are going," Silas said. He zoomed in on a large, beautiful mansion on the map. It was surrounded by a glowing red security fence

The bright white light of the office hurt their eyes. Silas Kapito did not move. He stared at the girl in the dark green uniform. Anya smiled. Her silver metal mask shined in the light. She kept her glowing energy-sword pressed tightly against Lord Vako’s fat, sweaty throat. Vako was shaking. He looked terrified, but his eyes were darting around the room like a trapped rat. "General Krov said you were fast, Silas," Anya said smoothly. "But I got here first. I caught the Chief Treasurer.""Then why are you standing in the corner?" Silas asked. His voice was cold and flat. Silas looked at the center of the giant office. The heavy black oak desk sat in the middle of the room. On top of the desk was the clear glass box. Inside the box was the glowing blue computer drive—the Shadow Ledger. Anya’s smile faded. She looked down at the smooth wooden floor between her and the desk. "Because of the floor," Anya said. "It is a Sovereign-Gate. It is a Bio-Security Wall."Ren stepped forward f